


The Old City Leviathan: Jonah's Notes

by JateGreen



Category: PC gamers, The Old City Leviathan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:55:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23037454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JateGreen/pseuds/JateGreen
Summary: This is from a PC game entitled "The Old City: Leviathan." The thoughts expressed in this piece of writing were heavily influenced by this game and there are parts of original game dialogue that have been paraphrased.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	The Old City Leviathan: Jonah's Notes

**Author's Note:**

> Each section break is when there was a load screen, moving the game from one chapter to the next. Other times it is simply moving from one thought to the next.

The whales have been singing their songs to me, again. Their chirps and whistles comfort me in a way no other can and they bring peace to the ache inside my head. They sing lullabies to me that allow me to sleep; they drown out all else that keeps me awake. And there are so many things to keep me awake these days. The clanging from above seems to come with more frequency than usual and the heat moving through the vast network of tubing...while it brings me comfort in this cold “underness” it is loud and claws into my mind. “Excuse me,” I’ll say. “The whales are speaking and it is rude to interrupt. I am grateful for your presence but right now I want to listen to what the whales say.” The heat never seems to mind when I gently rebuke its interruptions. It is a true friend that keep coming back again and again...like the whales. I do not know if they are friends exactly. They just impart their wisdom and continue on their way. I think I’d like to be their friend. I will have to ask them next time they start singing to me. (Muffled sounds of crunching and tearing). I am very glad these rats keep making their way into my room, they are delectable! Plus, I do not have to go looking for food as often as I used to. (Another crunch). Mmmm, crunchy, sweet, a little salty. I should try cooking them sometime but I really think they were meant to be eaten raw. Like broccoli—you can cook them but it is so much better just plucked from the ground. I’ll have to ask the whales if they enjoy rat better cooked or raw.   
* * *   
I have been laying on this cot for far too many days. I have been caught again in that timeless deceiver—Routine. Listening to the noises above, sitting in my heated space...eating rat. (My face becomes downcast). I really think the whales are offended at my eating of the small creatures. The small...crunchy...their bones snap so delicately. The last I heard of the whales was some time ago. I had mentioned to them that they might try rat sometime, to give variety to their usual fare. Then they swam away, as they do. They have not returned and I think Routine has a part to play in all this. My sleep has been plagued by the screams of rats. I think it is time I go looking for the whales and listen to their songs so that I may sleep peaceably once again.   
* * *  
I walk up to the thoroughfare and check the box titled upon its side. It has been my mailbox for as long as I can remember...how long has it been since I last received letters? I cannot quite recall. The box is empty, as usual. But I still like to look. What if the whales had written to me and I missed their note? It would be terribly rude of me. At first, I thought that was the reason why I had not heard from them. But no, no mail. No letters, no notes, no pictures of tales slapping the surface of the waters. If I had not offended them by missing their mail then it must truly be about the rats. I must go and apologize. I did not realize how upsetting it must be to have stomachs that become agitated by rat flesh. Mmmm, maybe I can bring one with—no, the whales would not like that. It is, after all, how this whole misunderstanding began. (I yawn down along every fiber of my being). I will go visit the whales and ask for their lovely songs. Then maybe we can talk of what they like to eat. They could then send me recipes and I would have mail again. Yes, the whales will solve everything. I go now, I go. 

* * *   
I have gone down to the depths, where the water rolls freely. The whales are not here. How peculiar, this is a favorite place of theirs to frolic in the open spaces. Regrettably, it means I must now search up. I do not enjoy going up, going down is much more peaceful. To drift down is everything. To climb us is meaningless work and it usually solves nothing. *Sigh. It seems it is my lot to climb to find them. We all drew lots and for awhile mine was to fall to drift down. Now it seems my lot has fallen, to climb. I shall have to talk to the rest about that, it does not seem right that one must fall in order to climb. Then again, I am not searching for them. I am searching for the whales. I would not mind if they threw me to the whales. As it is, they seem only willing to throw me to sharks.   
* * *   
I have climbed, but I do not want to go farther. I must, I know; my lot is to climb now. This is what the whales have been saying with their absence. This is what they have been attempting to convey. Oh whales...why? Why now do you deny me your song? Why now are you swimming away from darkness and into light? Cruel, cruel whales. I cannot sleep without you anymore and you know it. It seems even you are not beyond sinking to the depths above. I was a fool to listen, to become addicted. Though it pains me, I must follow. The light below is not nearly as pleasant as the darkness above. I come, I go, I will find you and take the peace that is due me.  
* * *  
That was a cruel jest indeed! I am coming to see that the teeth of whales can look just as fierce as those of sharks and can cut nearly as deep. Whales, whose eyes seemed so full of life have now rolled over into deadened black roses. The red petals and their softness are a sham. But I will take back the eyes that are mine; I will rub the silky soft red under my chin once more. And I will drink rat blood just to spite them! The whales become sharks. So this is why they wanted to toss be overboard. They knew then what I did not—that the teeth of whales can crunch me as easily as I that of any rat. I will climb, yes, I will climb and knock them back into the depths that they have drifted beyond. Then they will ask me to sing songs to them so they can sleep. But I will not. I will show to them the measure of mercy they have seen fit to bestow upon me.   
* * *   
And so it is. The whales have sank their teeth into one of the rats after all. Its flesh still lingers upon the bone of the limbs but that of the face is gone. They even left its clothes...I think I now know why we cast lots. It was to choose the one to fight the ones whose eyes seems soft as red rose petals but which, are truly dead and dying. They did want to offer me to sharks—the ones that sing their lovely songs bringing false peace to those foolish enough to believe in them. They no longer must wait for me to fulfill my lot. I will do this thing, a thing I have not done—fear to do, but will do for them for now I see clearly. They would not offer me as sacrifice to save themselves. They offered me the chance to sacrifice myself on their behalf so I would save us all.   
* * *  
I stand before the gate of what will surely be my own destruction. I no longer care. My anger burns as bright and hot as a firebrand. They are all dead. The whales too them one by one over the years. They sung soothing melodic songs to ensnare the mind of the only one they knew could stop them and like a fool, I listened. Now there is no one left to save. I will take the jagged poker from the flames and stab out the yes of these charlatans. They have lulled to sleep one that was meant to stop them. But why stop singing to me? Is not that what started all this? Why draw me out when they know the danger? It matters not, for soon I will draw out them, and with their blood renew the color of the rose that should always have been. My destruction awaits. Their destruction is nigh. So be it. 

* * *  
How predictable and yet not so, for it would not have crossed my mind had I not witnessed it. Four dead rats as soon as the door opens. A peace offering perhaps? Or the first desperate attempt to stave off the coming storm, which they now sense overtaking them? Do they sense color coming back to the rose? Can they guess how it will be changed, over-late? I will have my rat and eat it too...later. I have a jar of eyes to collect.   
* * *  
The whales felt me getting too close, so they showed me what they had done. And oh, what they had done! I...I do not think I could ever eat another rat again. Crunching bones and licking the meat off of them in clean, orderly fashion is one thing. To see their parts stuffed into bags like nothing more than common refuse...the whales have shown the extent to which they are willing to go. My friends were only appetizer. They have swallowed the souls of countless dozens. As the truth loomed up from above, their songs came to me and I allowed myself to drift down once more and I slept. Dreams of peace did not come though, only the realization of my own confinement within the sea that the whales call home. They have sent me to my room. Not the hole-in-the-wall-apartment. No, to my old room with real walls. The bed I slept in was real mattress, with real sheets. The whales think to lull me back to complacency. While all this is nice, I am beyond peace here. There are no longer any hands to throw me overboard. When next I wake, I will walk willingly to the side and pitch myself back into the realm of the whales. Contentment is a dream that is now beyond me. It is a reality they have had alone for too long. I can sense them, willing me to return to the heights of familiarity but I will press deeper into the realms of the unknown.   
* * *  
My God! With the opening of that previous door the truth blares upon me. Sunshine? Clouds? So I am mad then...but I still have whales to conquer, be they actual creatures or only the Leviathan that is my mind.   
* * *  
I see now what the true evil is—Inaction. Through the lack of doing, we become part of the Nothing. I am not doing anything spectacular, simply walking, and yet each step is like a bomb that concusses the whales in their dark neighborhood. How curious the effective motion is of simply deciding to move forward. The whales know this truth, do they not? They are ever moving, for if they stop and for long enough, they die. Motion then seems the enemy of Nothingness.   
* * *   
Mere motion cannot be the answer, for I still ended in the Void. The Void is the absence of something—a vast Nothing. So, while motion is needed, something additional is required. To find it, one seems to need motion. It is only one petal of the rose, and not the whole flower. Yes, something more than motion, surely. For out here there was such motion as I never knew in the depths, and yet it still ended in death. Something must be out there to control this motion, to guide it. Motion alone leads one to death on swift legs.   
* * *  
I have found it. Beyond comprehension or belief—Ziz, the land of the whales. I hear their calls plainly now, but whether they know they can no longer subdue me or they hope they can again, their attempts availeth them not. As I stand and listen, the realization comes upon me—it is not I they sing for, no, it is the others, the ones still trapped by Routine, by the motions of Inaction. Their song fuels it. Their song seduces, tempts the weary mind into drinking the waters they thrive within. The waters that leave the lungs gasping for air, though they be continually functioning as time’s machine has ordained them to. The whales pay me no attention and that is all well. For motion, or rather the mysterious elusiveness that guides motion, urges me onward.   
* * *  
Perhaps contentment is nothing but stagnation. This would have seemed true what seemed long ages past. I was caught by the stagnate waters and drank from them. But even that was false, for the waters never truly stood still. They were always moving from one place to another. Even they were in a constant state of motion. Not even the waters were content to stay within the parameters made for them by artificial means. Did not they also allow this Something to guide their motions so that they would not have to endure the seeming Nothing? At one time, the whales sang from within those waters. How ironic, that from the things that lived and breathed motion, were the teachers that this willing disciple learned peace and contentment within the confines of Inaction. The whales lived within that which was not content to remain as it was, just as their songs can no longer persuade me to stay as is.  
* * *  
So many doors; why are there so many doors? This motion is wearisome and as I tire the songs of the whales grow louder. I’ve heard it said that the soul has many mirrors but they who said it were too busy looking at their own reflection. As if somehow the answers they sought could be found in the face that stared back at them. Had they looked closer, they would have seen the handle of so many doors. It would seem then that whatever the Something is that fuels this ceaseless motion within me, wants me to look past the rat flesh and focus instead upon the rose. The rose the rises like a Leviathan from the deep recesses of existence.   
* * *  
The waters escape their confinement and empty into the sea. But even these waters have a limit. They wash upon the shore and seek ever to climb upward yet are irrevocably pulled back. Will be be pulled back as well? These waters have been given a semblance of freedom but, though the boundary of their movement has been altered, it still exists nonetheless. Is this the conclusion then? Will I be given freedom only to find that I will continue to go through the motions? If my horizons are extended so that it takes a lifetime to realize their contours, have I lived? Have I not only gone through the motions to discover that it takes longer to observe the walls of this new prison? More doors, more doors are required. I will push past the mirrors and prick the delicate rat flesh so that it may bleed upon the rose and mingle with color, which seems the only reality I am destined to understand.   
* * *  
All the pages in the world, all the words ever to be bled onto their pages cannot elucidate why so many doors are required to find something that demands motion. They smell like rose, their pages feel like rose...but none of them are rose. Knowledge then, along with motion, is useless. Blind knowledge only leads one upon the path to Nowhere. The Source that bleeds knowledge and the Something that drives motion continues to elude. Yet now an entity of increasing personality has made itself known. This entity is a Something and it is a Source. In an existence of uncertainty and confusion, this much I know: if there is a Something then we do not have to accept the Nothing and if there is a Source, we should continue our motion until we attain it. We should not think to accept the gift of whales that give false hope in songs that do not satisfy.   
* * *   
It seems surreal. Even one of the whales became tired with their part to play in this madness. One from among their ranks attempted to push the limit of their boundary. Here it lies upon the shore, lifeless. And yet, is this one so different than I? Did it not feel the tug of the Something and yearn to find its Source? I wonder if, in the end, it found a song that was worth risking death and if in those last few moments it found life after all. And so shall I press forward; so shall I come to the boundary of my being. I will cross over the final threshold—and live! Yes, I have seen how this works now. The green pipes, the charitable structures, they are the root of my entrenchment. No longer. I will find the Source.   
* * *  
And so, now it comes. I suppose this is what the whale felt, before its leap beyond what is known and the speculation of what is possible. I will take my own leap out of the waters of Leviathan. What mysteries await me, who can say? But leap I will because leap I must. I have been pushed into motion by the desire to live, and what more can I do, other than to try? It seems the island of my mind can no longer hold me captive. I will venture forth into this new reality I still do not know what thrust me into motion, but at its core it was a call to live. Knowledge alone could not bring me here. Motion in and of itself was not enough. I must admit, I have more questions than answers. Choice, the will, a broken psyche. Who knows how it all conglomerated together to bring me to this place. As I emerge from the Rose of Sharon, I smile. It is the first ever in ages. It seems Solomon found a song worth listening to after all. It does not have to be my song, not now that the Rose is in its zenith. I go to the edge, I live. I dream.   
* * *  
I gasp, my lung fill with air. I dared to live outside my prison but I am not dead as I thought to follow the whale washed ashore. Or perhaps I am. Perhaps my body is still laying back at the Rose Station. This new being is equipped with motility and I shall explore this new life and discover myself in it. Perhaps I only needed to see the stagnation before evolving past the constrains of Something I was willingly giving myself to. A Something I did not understand. Even now, I do not fully grasp it. I only know that motion was necessary; the Something was a will that could no longer accept the old Was and needed to press on towards the Source of a new Is. That Something was the audacity to dream, was a new dream itself. It called to me above the songs of the whales, above the call to a life of stagnation. This new dream is neither the old belief that Was, nor the discipline of the hope that might have been. It simply Is. It simply exists to be discovered. Now that I have left one dream behind for another, my natural state demands I judge it as worthy or not. To do so is futile. Why would I think I could be correct in such an endeavor? Why think that, whatever judgment was made, could have any hope of being the Source? If I am not the Source, I am only a Something, which granted is not Nothing. But if I think I am the Source, then surely I have become Nothing and stagnation resumes. Stagnation, deconstruction, the process is a cycle leading me ever onward to live in dreams where I am not its Source, but only a Something that dwells within and experiences all that Is. Perhaps the dreams are never meant to be realized. Perhaps the dreams are only signs that a progression of the Soul has been accepted.


End file.
